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Sunday, July 14, 2013

Pratap Chitnis has died

The Guardian website has an obituary of Lord Chitnis, who died on Friday. It describes him as "one of the most prominent fixers in centre-left politics from 1960 to the end of the 1980s".

Pratap Chitnis was Eric Lubbock's agent when he won the 1962 Orpington by-election. The obituary also reveals that Chtinis fell out with Jeremy Thorpe in a pretty fundamental way:

When Thorpe went on trial in 1979 for attempted murder and conspiracy to murder, Chitnis and some Liberal friends persuaded the former MP Peter Bessell to return to England from the US to be a witness. Bessell claimed to have heard discussions about the murder plot. Thorpe was acquitted but he had to resign the party leadership.